Day 83

"You must give an account on judgment day of every idle word you speak." Matthew 12:36

"Stand your ground, putting on the sturdy belt of truth . . . " Ephesians 6:14a

Exaggeration. Selective memory. A negative perspective. These are things that can ruin – friendships, marriages, families. Yet, they don’t seem so bad. We hear people all the time complaining about their lives- soccer moms complaining about their husbands; parents belittling their children; kids actively in battle with their parents or peers.

There was that moment when my friend seemed not to care a bit about my feelings. Somehow in my mind, I recalled times in the past just like this – times I was not good enough, times I let her down. That’s all I could think of.

Some days dinner comes and the house feels happy. Other times, evening arrives like a cloud, somehow darkening every thing in the day that went well and only letting through the bad things – when the youngest child swore, or a coworker laughed at your ideas.

Many of us get in these places where we only see what is right in front of us and it colors everything behind and beyond. Worse, we sometimes react from that place. Our tone with our families is sharp and biting over a gloomy dinner table. Our aggravation with our friends turns into angry silence. These are idle words - the language we think doesn’t matter because “all families talk like that” or “everyone gets mad."

This commandment about falsehood doesn’t just mean things we speak, but also trains of thought and the words that come out of them. The way I think about my child’s request affects how I respond. A tired child’s “can I have a glass of water” can receive gentle or abrasive response. We can build up or tear down. Our friend’s best intensions can be ruined by our reaction to what we have told ourselves they meant.

And, while we are deceiving ourselves by believing false paradigms, our armor – the stuff God provides for us to protect ourselves – gets a chink in it. We need that belt of truth because if we instead put on a belt of self-pity or the continual hat of the victim, we are not dressed for the war we must wage.

Pray: Holy Spirit, please help us to see when we are misleading ourselves. Tap us hard when we allow ourselves to speak ruin because of the lies we choose to believe.